With Trouble at Home, Boehner Fights the Right

posted by Patricia Murphy
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2 years ago

“They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals,” Boehner said at a press conference last week. “This is ridiculous.”

And with that, Boehner not only said what a number of Republicans had been thinking, he also hit the gas on a speakership almost totally stalled by wrangling and tangling within his own Republican caucus, infighting that was increasingly being driven not by the members themselves but by the outside groups looking to fund-raise off disagreements with GOP leaders.

Boehner’s decision to fight back against outside conservative activists, along with a key hire on immigration reform and a move last Monday to file papers for his own reelection in Ohio’s 8th District, show the newly aggressive speaker taking matters into his own hands and out of the death grip of the raucous caucus that elected him to lead the House in 2011 but has done little of substance since then.

The series of events has enraged conservatives in Washington and even in Boehner’s own Ohio district. But it also has given immigration activists in particular hope that he might use his newfound interest in passing bills to pass theirs, particularly in light of his recent decision to hire Becky Tallent, Sen. John McCain’s former chief of staff, to run immigration reform for the speaker’s office.

People who have worked with Tallent describe her as smart, deeply versed in immigration policy, and a tough-as-nails negotiator who knows where the path lies to get immigration reform done. In other words, she’s not the kind of woman you’d hire to work on a dead issue.

“The fact that opponents of immigration reform have been apoplectic over her hiring should tell you something,” says Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-reform group.

But Sharry pointed to another factor that gives him even more confidence: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Boehner’s secret sauce on the budget deal who could be just as valuable on an immigration reform package, which Ryan worked for months to negotiate behind the scenes before talks broke down over the summer.

“If it were just up to John Boehner, I’d be worried,” Sharry said. “It’s Paul Ryan’s involvement that gives me hope.”